“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.”

Who gathers the withered rose?

I think that no one individual can look at truth. It blinds you. You look at it and you see one phase of it.

Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.

Fear is the most damnable, damaging thing to human personality in the whole world.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut.

If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green…

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

Someone else looks at it and sees a slightly awry phase of it. But taken all together, the truth is in what they saw though nobody saw the truth intact.

Your illusions are a part of you like your bones and flesh and memory.

I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought.

A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.

People need trouble – a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it.

If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this, not as a class or classes, but as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.

The past is never dead, it is not even past.

No battle is ever won … victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

I think it’s pretty classic if you look at the way entertainment reflects the country’s status.

My new shorty got a gymnastic back, ’87 emerald green on a classic Jag. She had the cleft palate, I ordered chef’s salad; She had the club foot, with that little arm, I couldn’t help but laugh…she ordered Chicken Parm.

Am I in love? Absolutely. I’m in love with ancient philosophers, foreign painters, classic authors, and musicians who have died long ago. I’m a passionate lover.

Classic romantic love is an emotional attraction between two individuals in which they may share a heightened awareness of mutual adoration.

I think that Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs, like, a pump-up. And I think Jock Jams is a classic pump-up. Like before she starts working, she needs that.

I love cars, I have two classic cars of my own.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

In some parts of life, like mathematics and science, yeah, I was a genius. I would top all the top scores you could ever measure it by.